Rights for Future People: How Coherent? How Useful?

Whether future people--and other sentient beings--can be said to have rights has long been a matter of controversy as has whether they would 'waive' such rights if this were a condition of their coming into existence. Dr. Rendall will argue that consequentialists can make a coherent case for assigning rights to future people. No logical or metaphysical barrier stands in the way of rights protecting their interests, so long as their purpose is to establish correlative duties for agents today. Nor does granting such rights require us to depart from the usual understanding of harm. Whether or not consequentialists should assign rights to the future-or merely duties to the present--is a decision to be made on largely pragmatic grounds.

All are welcome. A café is situated outside the seminar room for those who would like to order refreshments prior to joining us at the event.